Tiger: Not yet out of the Woods

The entirely predictable problems that stem from Tiger Woods’s decision not to confront the media during last month’s stage-managed mea culpa will be well to the fore at next month’s US Masters at Augusta.

In what was always going to be a PR disaster, Woods and his advisors opted for the golfer to read a statement of remorse in front of a handpicked audience, with no questions asked, when he made his first face-to-face utterances about the sex scandal that engulfed his world, and ours, late last year.

Wiser counsel would have had Woods subject himself to the sort of questions that Tracey Grimshaw put to rugby league’s Matthew Johns in the wake of his sex scandal last May. Grimshaw asked all the questions that people wanted answered, leaving viewers able to make up their own minds on the genuineness of Johns’s contrition and remorse. The general perception is that Johns passed that test and both he and the public now feel free to move on.

Woods, however, has still to answer the questions of why, and how could he, and what was he thinking of, and what about his wife and kids. The public still wants to know, and the journalists still want to not-so-politely enquire.

If Woods thinks that returning to competitive golf in the oh-so-regulated Masters means he will be able to duck such questions then I strongly suspect he has another thing coming. The Masters will no doubt try to weed out what they see as the trouble-making tabloid journalists, keeping the media to the golfing faithful. But while golf writers have traditionally shied away from asking questions about anything other than golf there is little doubt that respective editors will have stiffened their spines considerably with subtle lines like: ‘’If you don’t ask the right questions  don’t bother reporting back for work the following week.’’

And if the Masters organisers, or Woods’s minders, try to ban any non-golfing questions then be prepared for a media walkout.

The questions will have to be answered, either at Augusta or the next tournament or the next, dragging out a matter that should have been settled months ago.

But that’s what happens when a crisis strategy is all about control, with barely a nod to candour.